


In the Blackout

by RidiculousMavis



Category: The Bletchley Circle
Genre: Bletchley-era, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 19:46:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2785487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RidiculousMavis/pseuds/RidiculousMavis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I'm Millie. I'm your roommate. On welcome duty. Not doing a massively good job, I know. Too much enthusiasm, or so people tell me. I suppose I'll never be debonair, oh well.”</i>
</p><p> <i>Susan had precisely no clue how to take all this. Her training had prepared her for serious military business.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Blackout

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fallingvoices](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallingvoices/gifts).



> This assignment was an absolute pleasure, thank you. And thank you to SlowMercury for the betaing.

Susan rapped the knocker smartly on the door. Her housing assignment was a looming, large place. She only had a name and the address and the assurances her arrival was expected. The train to Milton Keynes had been delayed, of course. But she was here now.

The door opened to the vague silhouette of a beaming and fashionable woman of about Susan's age. “Hullo!” the stranger exclaimed. “You must be Susan! Come in, let me take your bag. I'm Millie. I'm so pleased to meet you.” She took Susan’s bag and fought with the thick blackout curtain to get them safely into the hall. “Are you inside? Watch the rug, let me get that door closed, just a minute. Blast.”

There was a thump, then a crash.

“I imagine that's the lamp,” came Millie’s voice from the gloom. “I shall make that confession later. It's not as if it was Ming Dynasty. I hope. Anyway, there's a light switch here somewhere.”

“You're not Mrs Donalds?” 

“Heavens, no. I'm Millie. I'm your roommate. On welcome duty. Not doing a massively good job, I know. Too much enthusiasm, or so people tell me. I suppose I'll never be debonair, oh well.”

Susan had precisely no clue how to take all this. Her training had prepared her for serious military business. 

“Aha!” With the dramatic exclamation the light came on in the hall. “Well, that's better. Now then, how are you? What shall we do first? Put you in your room, have a cup of tea? Have you eaten?”

This was too overwhelming. “I'm fine, thank you. I should like to get settled.”

“Righto. Just up here.”

This Millie character carried Susan's case up the wide staircase and headed up one side as it split. The hallway was heavily wood panelled, a one-time grand old house. Susan imagined the commandeering of this old place, some widow overrun by girls for the post office at Bletchley. Or so they thought. 

“How many – ” Her voice caught and she coughed. “How many live here?”

“There's three of us now, plus you, so four I guess. They are getting another two rooms ready though. Everywhere within a ten mile radius is going to be packed to the rafters I should think.”

“What's it like,” Susan asked again, “at the Park?”

“Terribly exciting.” Millie turned to smile at her. “And here we are.” She swung open the door and Susan stepped into a nice sized bedroom. The décor was old-fashioned but there were dressers and a table, thick curtains and a wash stand. Everything had a doily underneath it or nearby. The blankets on the bed were extravagantly patterned. 

As Susan looked around, Millie put down her case and threw herself on one of the beds. “Isn't it awful?” she said. “I love it.”

“I'm sure it will do.”

“Oh dear, there you are being all stoic and sensible about it and making me look bad.”

Susan didn't reply. She took her case toward the unmade bed. “Thank you for your help,” she said to Millie. A little chilly but she would rather be on her own to acclimatise and unpack her things.

“Don't mention it,” Millie said, far too obligingly. 

“If you need to get on...” Susan offered, hoping it would be taken up.

“No, I'm fine, thanks.” Millie began leafing through a magazine on that bed and Susan realised she wasn't going to leave. This was the permanent arrangement. 

So Susan looked, surreptitiously, taking in the place. Rambunctious Millie had done up her side of the room with a few holiday-type snaps and magazine clippings.

Susan herself was determined not to succumb to such things. This was war, she could be posted anywhere at any time and had to accept that. There would be no time for sentimentality, for getting attached, for feeling at home. She was here to do a job... one that she was still a little unclear on, exactly, but by goodness she was going to do that job to the best of her abilities and not let anything stand in her way.

Certainly not her living arrangements and certainly not this strange girl insisting on shadowing her every movement.

She went to the dresser and found the top two drawers empty. It was strangely touching. Millie was watching her over the magazine and gave her an encouraging smile that she did not need. It didn't take long to organise her meagre belongings and then she was glad, in a way, for Millie's company. She would not want to go down on her own.

But Millie led her and introduced her to another girl in the parlour, showed her the kitchen and fetched a dustpan and brush to deal with the now-defunct lamp in the hallway. She arranged the pieces on the heavy wooden kitchen table, poking at them hopefully, as though they might rearrange themselves.

“A goner, I should say. What a pain.”

Susan deftly moved a few shards around to resurrect the approximate shape of the porcelain base. 

“Well,” Millie said with great amusement. “I can see why they brought you here.”

“Here where?” Susan asked distractedly. 

“To Bletchley. And I'm sure your talents are very impressive,” Millie said. “Another option would be for me to replace it with the one from the downstairs cloakroom that never gets used and then see if I can pick up a new one in town on my next day off.”

“That's certainly a different approach.”

“Takes all sorts,” Millie said, tapping her head and rolling the pieces up in a bit of newspaper before tipping it into the bin. 

“Is that your particular speciality in problem solving, then?” Susan asked. “Hiding the evidence?”

“That, and then having the gift of the gab to get away with it,” Millie said. “And that would be me. Languages, culture. We're not all serious maths and science girls. Well, we mostly are. Almost all of us, in fact. Sometimes I feel rather like the resident floozy.”

Even with only a brief acquaintance Susan thought that seemed a perfectly plausible feeling for Millie to have so she said nothing as Millie made good on her plan and replaced the lamp.

“Anyway. Lav is out the back door here. Not entirely outdoors, thank goodness. Hope you've got yourself a hefty dressing gown and some good slippers. Anderson is in the garden.”

“I should be fine.”

“Good. Cocoa? Tea?”

So they had cocoa and headed up to bed. Millie helped Susan make the bed and Susan was done for, crawling into it happily despite the lumpy mattress and slightly musty smell to the sheets.

Millie was reading. “Do you want me to put the light out?”

“No, you carry on.” Susan rolled over. But Millie left her bed to pad about the room and in a few minutes the light was out anyway.

It felt, Susan recalled, entirely different than she had expected but she almost immediately couldn't remember what that had been. She was not one to linger on such things. 

Introductions to Mrs Donalds came the next morning and all sorts of other meetings followed rapidly. Susan was diligent in remembering names and faces and practising them throughout the day. She met Miss McBrien, solemn floor manager for Hut 4, and many of the other forty or so women on duty at any one time. 

She was only on the edges of it but it was clear the operation was a massive one, the sort of scale that would be inconceivable outside the war. Bletchley, or, more mysteriously, Station X, sat at the centre of a vast web of intelligence gathering across the whole country and within it were more and more smaller scale iterations. Each gathering information, funnelling, channelling, analysing, decoding, revealing. And then shuffling the information on. It was dizzying but deeply satisfying too. Human machines supporting the mechanical. The mechanical in turn supporting the organs of war elsewhere. It made sense to Susan, it clicked in an innate way. 

The work, too, clicked. She was still grappling with the enormity of it, the potential of it. The house - described by her ever-dramatic roommate as “too Gothic to be properly Austenesque, more’s the pity. Imagine what fun we could have prancing around the place…” and so on - was still an intimidating prospect, as were her supervisors and most of the other people working there. It was the greatest collection of people Susan had ever seen. 

What made less sense over the following weeks was Millie. Had they been merely living together, or working together, Susan was sure she would have found a way to cope. Occasionally they even managed an interesting enough conversation. But it was in fact rather more involved than that. 

Miss McBrien had them sat next to each other and at every turn Millie would be doing something highly irritating. While Susan tried to get a handle on the complexity of the ciphers Millie would be doodling on her intercepts and yawning. And it was not merely proximity. Miss McBrien expected them to collaborate at times, or at least be available to support and bounce ideas off one another. This was much worse. Whenever they had to work together Millie would lean back in her chair and chew on her pencil while regarding Susan with just the tiniest of smirks.

Currently, Millie was humming and tapping out a rhythm with her pencil. This did not seem to be producing any results that Susan could see. It looked rather as though Millie had given up. “Millie, concentrate!” she said in frustration.

“I am concentrating.”

“You're daydreaming.”

“Maybe that's how I concentrate.”

Jean, watching them from her desk, tutted and got out of her chair to intervene. “Susan, Millie, my office please. Bring your work.”

“Now we’re for it,” Millie grumbled.

“Whose fault is that?” Susan snapped under her breath. 

They stood sullen in front of Jean’s desk as she looked over their progress.

“I think we can agree this is not ideal,” Jean said. “What do you think went wrong?”

They shuffled in place, neither willing to break into an unsportsmanlike admission.

“Come on, girls, this is an important part of the process. How are you going to do it better next time?”

Susan was not impressed by the very basic premise of that statement: that they would be working together again. “I just think perhaps we are not suited.”

Jean settled back, content to let this crack open up in its own time. “Is that so?”

“I'm sure Millie has many talents –” 

Millie gave her an incredulous look. “No need to be so polite. Say what you really think.”

“Some talents,” Susan amended, given that leeway. “But perhaps they would work better with someone else?”

“And who would you suggest?”

“Yes, Susan,” Millie prodded. “Who would you foist me on instead?”

“That's not what I mean. This is just what I'm talking about, Millie. You're always there with a snide comment –”

“Snide? Who's snide? I don't think I'm snide. Witty, please.”

“If you put half as much energy into the work as you do on being 'witty' we might get a bit further.”

“Is that how you would diagnose this, then? Our failure is due to my being snide?”

“It's not a failure,” Jean interjected, though she was watching the debate with keen interest. “It's just a review.”

“Obviously that's not all of it,” Susan conceded.

Millie sighed exaggeratedly. “Come on then, take another shot. You think I don't apply myself?”

“And you would deny that?”

“Of course I would! I don't say you've got no imagination and can't think outside the box.” She considered that a moment. “Other than that I just did. Thing is,” she turned to Jean, “Susan has all the imagination of a gooseberry. But I dare say she is very good at maths.”

Susan raised her hands in defeat. “And which of those is more important right now, when it comes down to it?”

“A bit of imagination wouldn't go amiss. Along with the maths. I just said something very nice about you, I think that should be noted.”

“Preceded by something not so nice.”

“Realistic,” Millie modified. “It's realistic.”

Susan had to breathe in deep to pull together a halfway restrained response. “I'm quite clearly - realistically - not a gooseberry.”

“It's a metaphor, dear,” Millie said, rolling her eyes.

“Yes, I know that,” Susan snapped. “Maybe we don't have time for metaphors.”

“You're entirely too serious. I don't see that how I choose to express myself affects the viability of the mission.”

“You're frivolous. It shows.”

“Don't pull any punches,” Millie shot back.

They were fully facing off against each other now, apparently having forgotten Jean’s presence. As much as this was a fascinating display it was also getting out of hand. “All right, all right,” Jean interrupted. “Millie is too imaginative, Susan is not imaginative enough.” That seemed as obvious as anything. “What are we going to do about it?”

“Perhaps if Millie worked with someone who appreciated her particular methods and I worked with someone a little more my style, then that would be better, surely?” Susan attempted.

Millie snorted. “That pairs me up with basically no-one around here.”

“Well then maybe you shouldn't –” Susan flashed with something.

Jean raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“Nothing, I'm sorry. Clearly, Miss McBrien, this isn't working.”

“No, I agree. It's not working. I'm glad we've got all that out in the open. Perhaps we can move on now.” Jean tossed their assignment down on the desk. “Do it again.”

They stood looking at her. 

“I'm not sure what you mean?” Susan said with her nervous smile. 

“I said it's not working so try it again.”

The pair of them groaned and pulled agonised and distraught faces that were very pleasing to Jean. “Again. Go!” and they were dismissed.

“I need a fag,” Millie muttered and headed out of the hut. Susan looked after her for a moment until she gathered her courage and followed Millie out. 

Millie squeezed herself down the narrow space between the huts, sufficiently distant from any windows though the clattering noises of the machines could still be heard. She didn’t seem surprised to see Susan follow her. Millie offered the cigarette packet and Susan took one.

“I didn't mean... whatever it was I said,” Millie started to apologise. “I got a tad frustrated.”

“You don't say?” It did make Susan smile a bit. Though she had certainly said worse. “I don't really think you are frivolous. Well, I do. But I oughtn't have said it. Not to you and certainly not in front of Miss McBrien. Oh God, we've made fools of ourselves.” That realisation was an unpleasant one all the things she had said piled back into her mind.

“Happily that's not a new experience for me, as I'm sure you can imagine. It'll be all right. Jean knows I've got a hot temper. It was probably fun for her to see yours a bit, too. It was for me.”

“You catch plenty of my temper,” Susan said.

“Is that what it is? I thought it was just mild disapproval.”

“No, that's my temper.”

Millie laughed. She might have a quick temper but she was quick to everything, quick to laugh and quick to say something nice as well as scathing. That made things easier. 

“So what do you reckon? Think we can go back in and give it another go?”

Susan frowned at her. “I thought you said we were too different?”

“No, you said that. We're different but that needn't be a bad thing. We're like cogs.”

“What an apt metaphor,” Susan said, thinking of the machine of war grinding around them.

“That wasn't a coincidence, you know,” Millie said. “Don't you like it, feeling part of something big like that?”

Susan thought about it and knew that, even to spite Millie, she couldn't pretend not. “Yes. Do you?”

“No, of course not. I hate it. I feel flat and ironed out. But it has to be done.”

“Yes, I suppose it does. Is this you flat and ironed out? You seem quite a handful to me.”

“Look me up in peacetime,” Millie smiled and swung herself a bit closer to nudge her shoulder into Susan's. “I'll take you places that will blow your mind.”

“I hope not,” Susan said. “We could be old and grey by then anyway.”

“Oh, I don't think so,” Millie said with that confidence that sometimes drove Susan up the wall with the certainty of it but which could also be reassuring. “It'll burn itself out at some point even if no-one wins. Things can't last forever. Not even a thousand years. That's just not humanity's way. We just have to work with what we have, in the moment. Make the most of it or last it out, as the case may be.”

Susan had been feeling like this was something she was going to have to last out, hold onto its inevitable end one way or another and just keep her head down. The other option had never been much of a consideration. 

“You're very poetic.”

“So now you like my poetry?” Millie had a little dig. “What were you just saying to Jean?”

“In its place.”

“There's always a place for poetry,” Millie said, heartfelt if not entirely serious. “God, if we can't look for the beautiful bits in life what's the point?”

“That it changes, I thought?”

“Well, yes, but if it's nice and it changes to bad you'd better hope you held onto the beautiful bits. And if it's bad the beautiful bits are the only point.”

“And this is definitely a bad part.”

“But people are still getting married and having babies and doing whatever it is people are supposed to do.”

“Making new friends,” Susan said, hoping that Millie would be able to take that as it was meant.

“That too,” Millie said with a smile. “Quick, get me some paper, I'm going to write it down. You'll have to sign and date it in confession. Someone tell Churchill. Send it to the Germans.”

“Stop it or I’ll never say it again,” Susan warned her. 

“All right, all right,” Millie conceded. “God, you're like getting blood out of a stone.”

“Could you possibly be any more florid?”

“I intend to be as florid as possible at all times, so no, ideally not.” She dropped her cigarette. “We’d best get back in.”

Susan wasn't sure if she was imagining whether everything came a bit easier that afternoon. Whether maybe the smirk was actually encouragement. Whether the humming and the fidgeting weren't just very Millie and therefore, somehow, a sort of a comfort. Whether the obscure details and ready translations provided weren’t inspired. 

In the event the suspension of hostilities didn’t last long. Ground was constantly being lost and won back before being lost again and only hours later they were back in their digs with Millie muttering darkly about some slight overheard. 

“Dilly's fillies,” Millie snorted. “If anyone ever called me that I would give them a bloody nose.”

Susan ignored her. That seemed to be a generally effective way of dealing with Millie, not fanning the fire. Susan didn't have the energy to get involved. In any case the chatter was near-enough self-sustaining; it needed little input from Susan to keep rushing along on its rickety rail road. 

“And that bunch up at the house,” Millie's list of grudges continued. 

“We're supposed to be fighting the Axis, not the British,” Susan objected. She couldn't help herself. 

“Don't you worry, I'll fight anyone I can get my hands on.”

Going all in was the only option left to Susan. “What is it you are railing against now? What has you so agitated?”

“All of it. Doesn't it you?”

Did it? She wasn't sure. Maybe. “I just don't see what good being angry will do.”

“That's the British stiff upper lip for you. Loathsome thing. Once this damned war is over I’m going away. I'm off. Back to Europe, whatever is left of it. Why stop there? The whole world.”

“We've only just got here,” Susan said, exasperated to her very roots. “And you are already planning where you want to be next.”

“It's good for you. A bit of dreaming.”

“You want to keep your feet on the ground. Though 'keep' implies they were ever there in the first place.”

“See, darling?” Millie yawned. “You know me so well already.”

Millie was winding down now but had succeeded in getting Susan wound up, No doubt that was the intent. “I might know you,” Susan countered, “but I don't understand you one bit.”

After a long pause Millie said, “I think it’s me you’re angry with all the time.”

Susan didn't dignify that with an answer. They went to bed in a mood with one another. As ever, come the morning, it seemed less and less important and when Millie tossed Susan's slippers over to her so she didn't have to get out of bed without them, well, all was forgiven.

* * *

One morning, running perilously close to being late and Susan chastising Millie for it every step of the way, they hurried into the hut and found a visitor stood anxiously by their desks.

“Hullo,” Millie said. “You’re new.”

“I've come up from the Y Station at Beaumanor Hall. Oh. I probably oughtn't have said that.”

Millie didn't even need to look at Susan to perceive the pursed lips. “We shan't tell,” she got in first, conspiratorial.

Jean appeared. “Good, you've met Millie and Susan. Girls, this is Lucy.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Lucy. I'm Millie. This is Serious Susan.”

“Just Susan will do.” Susan leant forward and shook Lucy's hand. “Welcome to Bletchley.”

“Lucy, I want you sat here on the other side of Susan. I’ve got something for the three of you to have a look at.”

Chancing a look over, Millie found Susan to be impassive. Jean still intermittently put the two of them on projects together and Millie had begun to see, not a resolution of their differences exactly, but a light at the end of the tunnel. Introducing a third party - lovely and talented as she no doubt was - seemed to be rocking a boat constantly in danger of capsizing anyway. 

Jean dropped a manila folder on the desk, spreading out the pages of intercepts. 

“We’ve been sent this by Hut 8. First impressions?”

Susan arranged them into more ordered lines. She barely reacted when Millie took one off her and shuffled them around a bit. “There’s nothing wrong with the decryption. The header information is clear. But I don’t think it’s just junk.”

Jean nodded. “What makes you say that?”

“I’m not sure. It just… still looks like a code.”

Lucy moved forward and tapped at sections with her finger. “This part,” she said. “It repeats all over the place. Thirty… six times.”

Millie looked between her colleagues and started to feel pretty good about the arrangement. 

“I’ll leave you to it,” Jean said.

And they did get to it. Millie rapped her pencil on the table and sketched out possible location correlations with Lucy peering over her shoulder, correcting her but with a complete dispassion and lack of judgement. She could see Susan’s immersion in her frown; Millie could only imagine what gears were turning in her brain as she sorted the papers into one order after another, annotating them in her small, neat handwriting. They moved around each other easily, leaning across, taking sheets from one another’s hands, pointing aspects out, floating ideas.

It was the sort of rhythm Millie had long suspected they were teetering on the edge of but had never dared believe they could achieve. It felt effortless. It felt like dancing.

“Up on the wall, chronological order,” Millie prompted with an excited urgency. “And I’ll get some string.”

Once Susan and Lucy had the sheets tacked onto the wall Millie created a set of lines over them with the string. The letters blurred together if you gave them half a chance but it wasn’t that.

She started adjusting the sheets up and down. “No…” Then she took one from the wall and tore it along the first line.

Susan, naturally, objected. “Millie!”

“It’s all right. Lucy, you’ll keep an eye I’m putting them in the right order, you can remember that, can’t you?”

Lucy nodded.

“Here goes nothing.” In fact she only needed the first two sheets before she could step back. “Bloody hell.”

“What is it?” Lucy looked between her and the wall.

“It’s Wagner. They are testing the code with Wagner.”

Susan said, “Well.” 

“Well you never.” Millie amended on Susan’s behalf. She couldn’t help feeling a bit triumphant. Not for herself. For the dancing. 

“I’ll get Miss McBrien.”

“Very good, girls,” was Jean’s verdict. 

“That’s high praise,” Millie translated for Lucy who had become nervous again with Jean’s arrival.

“Though we still need to work out what we can do with it. But that’s for the next shift. You were due to knock off a while ago. Go on.”

“Is it always like that?” Lucy asked once outside, putting on their coats. 

“Not always,” Susan said.

“It might be, now.” Millie was feeling optimistic. “Where are you stopping?” she asked Lucy.

“Miles away. I have to get a bus.” She looked at her watch. “Next one is only ten minutes. Ordinarily I’d get the 16:24. Or there’s the other route that goes at 16:17 but it’s eight minutes longer and then… sorry.”

“No, clearly your orientation is going splendidly. That does sound a fuss, though. We’re just in the village. I think we might have a word with Jean about getting your housing assignment moved up. One of our WRNS is leaving next month. If you like.”

“Yes, I think that would be lovely.”

They walked Lucy to the bus stop, pushing their bikes, and indeed it did not take them long to cycle home and have a quick cold supper. 

As they were getting ready for bed Susan put clothes away in the dresser and looked at Millie with a discomforting seriousness, Millie bracing herself for some chastisement. “You were good today.”

Millie performed an exaggerated pantomime of falling off the bed in surprise. “We all were. Better than good.” Still, she grumbled. “Always so bloody matter of fact, you. I'd give shilling to hear you say something emotional. I'd even settle for off the cuff.”

“Not even half a crown? I’m offended.” Susan was nothing of the sort. 

Millie watched her folding her blouses just come from laundry. “See, that would count as humour if I didn't know you weren't being wholly serious about it. And if I didn't happen to know for a fact you don't possess even a shred of a sense of humour.”

“And aren't you grumpy about it.”

“And me usually so vivacious.”

“I don't know about vivacious. Irritating might cover it.”

“But good, remember?”

“You’re hardly going to let me forget. And I shan’t forget my shilling. You were very good.”

“I think you might have earnt it just now.”

“Fine. Take me to the pictures on Saturday?”

It was just as well, Millie thought, that she had remained on the floor. Or she might have fallen off the bed for real.

* * *

Millie had been more correct than Susan on Lucy’s first day. That experience did become the norm. They worked faster, more fluently, reading each other with increasing ease.

They did go to the pictures that Saturday. And regularly afterwards. Lucy did move in: Jean had complained that she was not their social secretary but the paperwork not-so-mysteriously materialised anyway. Sometimes they took the train into London, there was a night out dancing that was never repeated, and, sliding down the scale of social activities, regular trips to the Anderson shelter in the back garden.

On their breaks, over meals in the canteen, playing dominoes in the rec room after work when it was too cold and dark outside to contemplate making the journey home quite yet - they spent all their time together. 

Which was exactly where Susan found herself now, marooned by the weather that had begun to move toward winter. They had made a bet that the sleet would turn to rain rather than anything worse and were gambling on waiting it out for a while. Millie got them all a cup of tea and they sat about a table discussing the state of the world and the war. Such lofty topics that had become everyday conversation. 

“I didn’t expect I’d even get clerical,” Lucy was saying. This was baffling to Susan, that Lucy quite regularly didn’t seem to understand how she had ended up at Bletchley. “I thought I’d be in a factory. My sister was in munitions and said the women were coarse. So she got pregnant.”

“What a terrifying trade-off,” Millie laughed. “I'd take my chances getting blown up in a factory, thanks.”

“It's just the war,” Susan said. “Everything will go back to normal afterwards.”

“God, I hope not,” Millie blasphemed with gusto.

“But you want to get married and have children?” It seemed almost too obvious for Susan to even say out loud.

Meanwhile, Millie was looking at her in a curious manner. Quizzical and testing. She didn't answer though. 

It was Jean who took up the baton. Susan hadn’t even been sure she was listening to them, sat at a distance in an armchair reading a paper. And, she realised, Jean wasn’t married and didn’t have children. 

“We had that after the Great War,” Jean said and the three of them shifted in their seats to include her, listening intently. Susan had heard enough of Millie’s wild speculations as to Jean’s past to be scandalously intrigued, though of course she pretended she was nothing of the sort. She knew Millie especially would be listening with bated breath.

“The war to end all wars. Or so they said,” Jean continued. “But even when the war is over the fighting continues because how do you move forward? Those young men fought to preserve the world, our safety, to hold onto those old ideals. When they got back... they thought us girls had betrayed them. Wanting the vote, wanting to keep ‘their’ jobs. The hate sometimes, you could see it in their eyes. Veterans unemployed and me in a job.” She almost drifted off, reminiscing. 

“You could run the Empire single-handedly, I’m sure of it,” Millie said gently. 

“I’ve enough to do chasing after you lot,” Jean harrumphed and went to turn back to her paper. She stopped. “For everything that has been achieved there’s still so little that has changed. If I’d had children if they would be back dying in fields in France like my brothers did. But what you have to remember is that the peace will come and you need to be ready. Everything you’ve been able do here together… there’s no reason for that to end just because the war does. They will try to make you ordinary. Don’t let them.” Jean peered at them over her glasses as if to admonish them. But there was nothing else.

* * *

Another night, the three of them sat on Millie’s bed under a pile of blankets and half dozing off, Lucy said, “Do you find that you forget, sometimes, that the war is more than slips of paper? I know that's what those slips of paper mean. But it all seems so far away and unreal. Those codes, coming and going all day, feel like that's all it is. A big game being played. Who can get the next clue.”

“It does,” Millie agreed. “And when much of it is useless or old or wrong it doesn't make a body feel very useful.”

“Or when we can't stop it.”

“We can only do what we can do,” Susan mumbled. 

“Inspirational words there,” Millie commented with a smile. 

Susan sighed. “That's not what I meant exactly.”

“You're tired,” Millie said.

“We're all tired.”

“That doesn't mean you're not allowed to be. Just because everyone else is too. Or you, Lucy. People get burnt out over this job. When is your next leave?”

“Next month.”

“And what are you doing?”

“Just going home to my mum.”

“That'll be nice,” Millie said with an air of desperation to the encouragement. “She'll make your favourite dinners, I expect. You can go visiting your family, go to the pictures, get the bus into town.”

“We do most of those things here,” Lucy said, sliding down in the bed a little. “I like the work. I just wish it wasn't because people were off dying somewhere.”

“You still need a break. So do you, Susan.”

“I'm not long back from leave,” Susan said. “But now, every time I come back, it feels less and less like I was even away. And when I am away I hate it. Even if what we do here can be futile and frustrating at least it's doing something. I'd rather be doing something than nothing at all.”

“I have no doubt the country is perfectly safe given the fighting spirits exhibited in this very room,” Millie said with wry amusement and more than a little admiration. 

“Don't tease,” Susan admonished but Millie could feel the heavy lean against her shoulder of Susan’s fatigue.

“I'm not teasing, not really,” she said. 

Millie sat and listened to the rain as first Lucy and then Susan succumbed and fell asleep on her. And it would be a lie to say that there was anywhere else she would rather be in that moment either. If for slightly less noble reasons. 

She had always known that, really, since the moment Susan appeared on the doorstep, all grumbles and disapproval. Which had in fact done nothing but endear her to Millie. It amused her to know how much that would rankle Susan and rankling Susan was after all her favourite pastime. The two of them created a feedback loop of amusement and disapproval and amusement at the disapproval and disapproval at the amusement that could go on infinitely. Millie rather hoped it would. 

Susan was a sonnet. No lack of beauty but precise, set in that necessary framework. That would make Susan grumble too, Millie reflected gleefully. Poetry. Romance. Emotions, probably.

She thought about waking them up but it would happen sooner or later, sooner than she would like, certainly. So she just sat and listened to the rain.

* * *

The winter was hard. They rarely saw an hour of daylight. Day shifts meant working though it and evening or night shifts meant sleeping through it. 

Trying to get Millie up in time for shift was a battle. “Whatever would you do if I wasn’t here?” Susan would ask.

“Get in a lot of trouble,” Millie would reply groggily as she staggered to the washstand.

The huts were plagued with strange illnesses and injuries. In the evenings Millie would wrap wet bandages around Susan's wrists to cool the burning overnight, making her fit enough for work the next day but in the same state again twenty four hours later. Millie would watch with concern as Susan flexed her fingers in the day. For her part Susan would tap Millie on the shoulder at regular intervals as a reminder to sit up straight, or stop biting at her nails and later try to snaffle any spare fruit from the canteen to give to her in a bid to boost her vitamin C. 

Lucy, perfect in posture and apparently free of bad habits, would get lost in her thoughts. They would be sitting together and abruptly she would be gone, Millie and Susan feeling almost as though they too could read whatever it was that flashed before her eyes. Or she would be muttering them under her breath, codes on codes, listings, assignments. 

They would distract Lucy with games of Scrabble or dominoes or less dire facts and figures, sports, schoolgirl stuff. Playing games, testing each other out of Millie's old Every Girl's Handbook that she insisted she kept around for reference rather than nostalgia. 

“There’s a section on secret codes in there,” Millie said. “And it’s actually not half bad.”

“Think of all the new information they’ll be able to put in now,” Lucy said, leafing through it. 

“These codes however,” Susan said, brandishing a copy of Emma from the library up at the house, “are paltry.”

“It’s a romance, not a textbook,” Millie objected.

“And how are you getting on with Bleak House?” The compromise Susan had come to, in order to get what she felt was some sensible reading material into Millie, was a trade of sorts. Though she was enjoying the exchange more than she would admit.

“That on the other hand is a textbook. Just please don’t ever start a book club,” Millie said.

Literature disagreements aside, they made short work of crosswords and a mean team at the monthly quiz nights, invariably carrying off a prize of some sort, even if it was only a toy or trinket. 

The other girls would tease them in the hut the next day before Jean came along and sent them skittering back to their desks. “Won again? Congratulations.”

“And to think,” Millie said, “we just landed up sitting next to each other.”

Jean shook her head. “Just think. Now back to work.” The exuberance of youth, was what Jean actually thought. As though she hadn't had that planned all along.

* * *

By spring they began again to cast their net a little wider for their recreation and diversion. They were at a local pub, though fully half of the people in there, Susan surmised as she glanced around, were not local at all but drafted in, part of the not-even-particularly-small army at B.P. that the town had absorbed and knew enough not to ask about. It did mean they had to be more circumspect in their conversation but it was nice to be somewhere a little different. 

Millie was sat smoking with a contemplative look so that it didn’t surprise Susan at all when she came out with, “What do you think it would be like if there wasn't a war, if we'd met somewhere else?”

“Where would we meet?” 

“I don't know, at a party.”

Susan gave her a deeply incredulous look. 

“Crikey, it's just supposed to be a game.”

“I don't think we would meet,” Susan said, taking the whole thing far too seriously and applying all her analytical skill to it rather than playing along. She could see the trajectories of their lives in her mind and there was nothing to connect the two. 

“But if we did meet,” Millie insisted.

“I might have met Lucy...”

“Possibly. We'll play it with Lucy later and that should be fascinating given how literally you are taking it. Just imagine a situation in which we did meet.”

“On a train?”

“That'll do, fine, a train.”

“Then what?”

“That's what I wonder. Would we be friends?”

“No,” Susan said with the speed and surety of someone who had thought that through before. 

“Right,” said Millie, deflated.

“Oh, I see what you are getting at. Well… no. I didn't like you at first and on a train I wouldn't be compelled to get to know you.”

“And only being compelled to get to know me could make you like me?”

“More or less.”

“I'm beginning to regret starting this off,” Millie mumbled into her glass.

“Mills, you did ask, you can't be grumpy.”

“I liked you straight away. And I thought I was perfectly charming.”

“You were. I think that was part of the problem. I didn't know what to do with you.” Susan felt a sort of fondness for those early days but on balance far preferred the present. She still, often, didn’t know what to do with Millie, however. 

“And here's Lucy,” she said with what turned out to be relief, to stop her thinking too much. Susan pushed a chair toward Lucy with her foot. “Lucy, where was the shop you worked at?”

“Chigwell. Why?” 

“Millie is trying to work out if we would have known each other, without the war on.”

“No,” Lucy said immediately. “Only this level of upheaval could bring people of such disparate backgrounds together. I could have served you a hundred times in a shop and you would just glance over me.”

“Well that tells me,” Millie concluded. “Not that I think it's true,” she said firmly, “because I would dispute that.”

“What would you be doing, if not for the war?” Lucy asked her.

“Taken to the stage, probably.” Millie was always more comfortable when making a joke of herself and evidently had decided to return to that approach.

Susan couldn’t help but laugh at her. “What nonsense.”

“What?” 

“You could do anything.”

“And without the war I'd probably be doing nothing,” Millie clarified.

“I don't believe that for a second.”

“Then you hold me in higher esteem than I do myself.”

“I've got no doubt that's true,” Susan retorted. “You hold yourself in no esteem whatsoever.” That was unexpected and took even Susan herself aback. “I didn't mean that to sound so accusatory,” she added. “But I am right.” 

That caused a very momentary stutter in Millie’s demeanour and Susan knew she had landed a hit too close to home. 

They had both just about forgotten Lucy sitting between them, shrewdly observing over her glass.

“What are you drinking anyway?” Millie enquired of Lucy, gathering herself. “Taking it easy, I hope.”

“Shandy,” Lucy said, eyeing her with suspicion. “I've got a big sister already, thanks. I'm not looking for another.”

“Tough,” said Millie, poking her in the ribs. 

“Although heaven help you if Millie was your big sister,” Susan said. She didn’t seem to be able to stop herself. 

“I know what you are insinuating and it's simply not true” Millie protested. “That very moment I was making sure Lucy was being at least a little responsible. Which means I, in turn, was being responsible.”

Susan knew that wasn't responsibility, not really. It was protectiveness. Responsibility could be turned inward and Millie never did a responsible thing in her life that was directed at herself, only at taking care of other people. 

Gosh, what a way they had come, she reflected. Millie was still intensely irritating but now in a way Susan never wanted to be without. As well as being the most frustrating person Susan had ever met Millie was also the most brilliant and insightful and any number of superlatives that Susan would never disclose but knew to be true nonetheless. 

The problem with Millie was the very humanity of her. Every time Susan thought she had something pinned down on her she would go and do the most outrageously opposite thing possible. 

Like now, Millie had on a blouse that was almost Edwardian in style. Susan couldn't quite believe it was hers. How had she come by such a thing? On what impulse had it been bought or kept or made? Not by Millie, Susan presumed. Though she was increasingly open to recalibration on what Millie was or was not capable of, or indeed inclined toward. Maybe Millie sewed? Who could know? 

She wanted to ask, all of a sudden, as to the provenance of this blouse but didn’t want to interrupt. Lucy and Millie were having a good old giggle while she sat and silently parsed them. Well, Millie. No matter how much time she devoted to it Millie was always going to remain the unknowable enigma. 

Millie would say there was a poetry to that. Susan tried and failed to invoke the statement in Millie’s voice. Would it be haughty or droll or dripping with sarcasm or all three at the same time? She had wanted to become adept at predicting Millie’s reactions, behaviours. They were just more patterns, after all. It was frustrating. Sometimes she got angry at Millie for it, for making her work so hard when Millie herself seemed so effortless. For all the countless hours spent watching her, thinking of her, puzzling her out. 

Whenever they were apart she would think of Millie. Whenever they were together, as they almost always were, she gave herself up to that engrossed feeling more every day. 

That threw up an error of sorts. Was this typical? To want to know Millie inside out, all her secrets, every last detail? It wasn't even a want. It was a need, a necessity that Susan felt within herself. No matter what data she fed in, it always wanted more. This great pattern spiralling from the past, into the future, into every step Millie had ever taken or would ever take. It spun around Susan now, the arcing movement of Millie’s arm as she gestured, the lock of hair that had fallen into her face that in a moment she would tuck back behind her ear, never breaking her stride. 

It was monstrous, Susan thought. It was agony trying to keep up. Whatever it was she was looking for seemed always one step ahead. But why? Why did she need to know? Millie made her brain ache but it wasn't only her brain, it wasn't only exasperation or the odd bouts of admiration. It made her heart ache. It made her arms ache with wanting to rein in some of this frenetic energy. Or not rein it in, just to experience it in a different way. Maybe she could tuck the hair behind Millie's ear instead. And just as Susan entertained the thought, as if causing it, there the hair went. 

Millie paused and saw herself being watched. The look she gave Susan was one of defiance. She interpreted Susan's gaze as one of disapproval, Susan expected. And she would be right. She did disapprove. Greatly. Of herself, mostly. Mooning around like a schoolgirl.

And at that, the puzzle melted away and it all became clear. So clear that like an optical illusion it was now immediately impossible to look back and see it as anything else. An option Susan had not considered but which aligned perfectly well with all the evidence. 

Well, wasn't that interesting. Susan hadn't believed herself capable of such a thing but here it was, indisputable. The apex of months, nearly a year, of mounting evidence and investigation. The answer to why, to the contrary of everything she should feel, Millie continued to exert such a fascination over her, such a fondness. When by all rights she should be just as put out as the day they met. Susan’s judgements were not usually wrong. And she hadn't been wrong: Millie was reckless and headstrong and whimsical. But somehow that didn't seem to matter anymore.

Only it wasn't ‘somehow.’ It was love.

* * *

Out of the corner of her eye Millie could see Susan watching her. She wasn’t even going to hazard a guess at what she might have done now, what ire she might have attracted.

“I’m going to the loo,” Lucy said and once she left the table the two of them sat in silence. Millie played with the spare beer mats, rearranging them over and over on the table, thinking idly of the different permutations she could guide them through. Susan watched the beer mat display, not her. Millie supposed she already knew every shape that could be thrown, any combination that could be made.

Lucy came back to the table, picking up her coat. “I'm heading back with some of the girls. Are you coming?”

“Just a few more minutes,” Susan said and Millie wondered why, why they couldn't just drain their glasses now and head back with everyone else. But evidently Susan didn't want to, preferring to sit here in silence. Still, Millie was not going to argue with that. 

The rest of the drink seemed to take Susan an age to finish, then she fussed uncharacteristically in the toilets until finally she came back and put her coat on. Millie, bemused, did the same. 

The drizzle was mercifully light as they picked their way home in the dark. Millie's insistence that even despite the blackout they take a shortcut over the verges rather than by the road turned out to be, in retrospect, both a very bad and spectacularly good idea. 

The clouds blocked out much of the moonlit assistance and the grass was too long and slippery. Millie cursed lightly as she slid and almost came a cropper. She could see the movement of Susan's hand reaching in the darkness but it took a moment to make a connection. Their dim silhouettes came together and Susan’s hand slipped into the crook of Millie’s elbow, against the thick tweed coat, and held on. 

“And I'm not even wearing heels,” Millie said, largely just to distract herself from this development. “These are the flattest flats imaginable.”

The flattest flats imaginable turned out not to be much help either: soles so smooth it only took a few more steps before Millie was wobbling off again.

“Whoops!” She tried quickly to right herself. The extra weight of Susan at her side did not help and she slipped over in an almost graceful way. At least she avoided bringing Susan down with her but neither had Susan's support saved her. 

Millie landed flat on her back with a huff of breath and Susan standing over her in the darkness. “You all right?”

“Peachy,” Millie said. “Wet, muddy, probably covered in grass.”

“Nothing broken?”

“No, I don't think so.”

“Are you getting up?”

“Just let me catch my breath a moment.”

Susan shuffled around next to her, probably unable to go too far for fear of tripping over Millie’s prone body. “Fingers crossed no air raids in the next few minutes then.”

“Clouds’re too low. Anyway, let them come,” Millie smiled and folded her arms behind her head. “I feel as though I could take the whole Luftwaffe on.”

“What are you going to do, throw your shoes at them?” At least Susan seemed to be enjoying herself. 

“For starters. Then I might ask them to dance on this grass and have them all break their necks.”

“You'll catch a chill,” Susan said, levity gone for a moment. 

“Yes, all right, Mother.”

Susan just tutted and started searching about in the darkness as Millie sat up. “Where's your hand?” They found one another and Susan gave a tug, Millie pushing up.

Once standing the distance between them was indistinguishable. Millie waited for Susan to move, thinking that any fraction of these seconds was worth the tumble and whatever stains may have got on her coat. 

But Susan didn't move away. Even their hands stayed together, raised between them. Until finally Susan dropped them and Millie was resigned, that was the end of this moment. But still Susan didn't move away. Instead, Millie felt hands at her waist, under her coat, wrapping around her back. She tried to stay very calm and ideally not fall over again. She raised her arms in reciprocation around Susan's shoulders.

“You're shivering,” Millie said. She was, she was shaking in Millie's arms. 

“I suppose.”

“Are you cold?” It wasn't panic, exactly, that rose up in her and threatened to overtake her. Though some part of her brain was searching for an eject button it was very unlikely she would have pressed it. Reality was colliding with dreams in a way that seemed terrifying. 

Susan tilted back as if to look at Millie though she could surely only see an outline and not much else. “No. You're very warm.”

Millie swallowed. 

“Millie...” Susan said, gentle and low and not sounding entirely herself.

“Mm?” Millie squeaked.

And then it happened.

Raising herself slightly, Susan touched her lips against Millie's, arms tightening around her waist. Millie's hands moved to her face, to the wet hair and cold cheeks. Susan drew back but the hands on Millie's back encouraged her to follow so Millie did just that.

Despite the ever-present danger of treacherously slippery ground the kiss became stronger. They moved against one another once and then again, with more confidence. Millie couldn’t even think about it, the ever-running commentary in her mind fell silent. There was nothing to think, other than that this was just about perfect.

They held onto each other until the kiss retreated in the same way, small gentle movements, tender even, coming to rest leaning foreheads together. 

“Now I am cold,” Susan said with a little laugh.

Out of sheer relief and happiness, Millie laughed too. “We'd best get on then.” She turned, keeping an arm around Susan's shoulders, to provide some of that warmth and praying fervently not to land on her back again. 

They did in fact make it back to the house in safety, into their room to hang their coats in front of the little gas fire and turn away to quickly undress. Once in her nightie Millie came back around but Susan was already half into bed.

“Night,” Susan said quickly.

“Right. Night, then.”

So Millie did the same. She did not sleep for hours, anticipating a word, a sign, an invitation. When she did sleep it was all tossing and turning, dreaming of a hand turning down the blankets and slipping in next to her. In the few seconds of consciousness that followed, as she rolled over yet again, she knew it wasn't true. 

The next morning Susan made no mention of anything beyond the usual pleasantries and Millie normally wasn't good for much conversation prior to their eight o'clock starts in any case. She skipped breakfast just for a few minutes alone to collect herself and later managed to earn Jean's displeasure over something, so that kept her distracted for the rest of the day with chastisements and constant nit-picking.

After the shift Millie deliberately lost herself in the melee and arrived nonchalantly back at their room a little later. Lucy was sitting on her bed reading and both she and Susan got up when Millie entered. 

“Are you coming to dinner?”

“No, I think I'll...” she cast wildly about for something. “I think I'll write some letters.”

“You're not hungry?” Susan asked, looking at her with what Millie wanted to believe was genuine concern.

“I don't know, I don't feel quite well.”

“We can bring you back some bread and butter,” Lucy offered gallantly.

“No, thank you, darling.”

“Well, we'll be in the living room, if you want to join us,” said Susan. It seemed impossible she didn’t know why Millie found it all so agonising but she was doing a jolly good job of pretending. 

Once they left Millie had a lie down and ended up wasting two hours of the evening on an impromptu nap. The wasting was good - the day had been interminable enough already. She didn't feel like writing any letters so got up to wash and get changed, then went back to bed with a book. 

She could hear Susan and Lucy talking out in the hall and had a brief fluster as to whether to put down her book and pretend to be asleep but wasn't sure she could be that convincing so stayed as she was. 

When Susan entered Lucy put her head round the door too and gave a quick wave. Then they were alone together again.

“How are you feeling?”

“Mm, fine.” She went back to her book while Susan changed and did her hair, but did not have the wherewithal to pretend to be turning the pages when in fact she hadn’t read a word. 

“Put the light out if you’re ready,” Millie offered, closing her book when it was clear Susan was finished. 

So Susan did, and Millie heard her lie back down in the bed with a creak. Millie composed herself with a few deep breaths and realised it would be even harder to sleep tonight now with all that napping. 

But then there was movement, Susan's bed again, and almost immediately a hand was indeed at the covers, turning them down, and a jumbled collection of legs and arms arrived next to her. 

Still, though, the silence. Millie lay on her back, agonisingly aware of all her limbs and every twitch and breath. Susan lay on her side, facing her. Given the narrowness of the bed it was impossible not to be squeezed together.

“Are you angry with me?” Susan finally asked. 

Millie tried to keep her voice level but the question was not entirely what she had been expecting. “For what?”

“For kissing you.” 

That was unexpectedly frank, too. “I thought you were angry with yourself.”

“No,” Susan said with an unusually curious intonation, as though she had considered it but ultimately decided against. “Would that be typical, in this sort of scenario?”

That seemed like a very tactical way of describing it and Millie might ordinarily have quarrelled over it. Not now though. “I don't know,” Millie replied.

“Don't you? I assumed you did.” Susan moved forward and settled herself on Millie's shoulder. 

Millie wondered if that had perturbed Susan, though she didn't sound perturbed. She disrupted Susan by lifting her arm but then in recompense wrapped it around her, pulling her closer and slept much better that night than the last. 

Which is much how life continued over the next few weeks. Sometimes there would be nothing for days at a time, no indication that anything had passed between them. Friendly, comfortable, knowing. Bickering, also. But not intimate.

And then, out of the blue like some sort of miraculous lightning strike, Millie would be going about her business in their room, tidying her dresser top or hanging her undies to dry in front of the fire, when Susan would move in, too quick to be anticipated, and kiss her. Sometimes once, vanishing again as though it had never happened. Sometimes more. Millie lived constantly in question and chaos and swung equally constantly between being too happy to worry about it being anything other than wonderful, and being very worried indeed.

Millie was distracted, she knew that, but work gave her something to concentrate on. It wiped away everything else in her mind and required so much from her that she couldn't have brooded on Susan and what was going on anyway. Jean still had reason to give her a good talking to once when she was late back from a break when she had managed to get lost in her thoughts as she smoked a cigarette right down until it burned her fingers.

“Were you all right today?” Susan asked her, later.

“Yes. Why?” she replied as she worried away at a loose stitch in her jumper, preparing herself to be hauled over the coals. 

“You just seem distant.” Susan was watching her and it riled Millie up irrationally to know that Susan knew, exactly, what was going on and probably always would be able to read her like a book. “Do you want me to fix that up for you?”

“I can do it myself.”

“I know,” Susan said, not taking offence even though Millie gave her every reason to and it made Millie feel even worse. “But I will if you want me to.”

“I can't have you doing my mending,” Millie said. “I need to be more practical, don't you always say?”

“I do sometimes say that,” Susan conceded.

It was soft though and then Susan sat down next to her and leant forward. Millie braced herself, her hands slipping from her own jumper to Susan's cardigan, running around her waist. Susan kissed her then, long and still before breaking away. Millie held her breath, never knowing whether that was it or what might happen next. She remained completely still and then Susan was back for a few quick, gentle pecks. 

Millie certainly didn't anticipate what came after that. 

“You don't kiss me,” Susan correctly observed, like the kisses themselves completely out of the blue.

Aside from the fact they kissed one another all the time, with increasing frequency, Millie could immediately see the issue. “I never know if you want me to.”

“Do you want to?”

“Yes. Too much, really. I think that's what I worry about.”

Susan thought on it for a moment. “Why should it be too much?”

“Because I don't know if you realise how utterly in love with you I am.”

There was a pause. Appropriate, given the gravity of the statement. “And you think that might make a difference?”

“Mightn't it?” Not that the cat wasn't completely out the bag now, or anything. 

“Maybe,” Susan said, vague more because she was deep in thought than because she was trying to give Millie the brush off. “But I think I always knew, really.”

Of course Millie had long been telling herself she was playing the whole thing very cool and was surprised to learn that had not been the case. Perhaps a little relieved, too.

* * *

It was summertime, had barely been dark a few hours and Susan felt she had only just fallen asleep when the air raid sirens began their familiar wailing.

“Oh, not tonight,” she groaned, putting her pillow over her head.

“Come on.” Millie removed it, not even having gone to bed yet. “That'll not do you much good.”

They traipsed downstairs, meeting Lucy and the other girls out in the hall. Millie continued reading even as she meandered down the garden path. The shelter had a damp, earthy smell that to Susan seemed to be the smell of both boredom and panic.

Millie always occupied the boredom end of the spectrum. Right now she was sprawled out reading and was the only one of the boarders that Susan had ever seen actually sleep during a raid. Susan preferred to play a card game of some unsuitable and unladylike stripe. Which she generally won. It soothed her mind to count the cards and plot their passage through the deck. The only person who could beat her was Lucy and Susan suspected that was because she did similarly. Unfortunately, that was who she was playing now. 

Interruptions came regularly. Dust shook from the ceiling of the Anderson and jars rattled on the shelves. Susan looked around, twisted in her seat to make sure all was still intact. She saw Millie frown with annoyance and brush debris from the pages of her book. 

“I saw your cards,” said Lucy.

“I guess we'll just have to start again,” Susan said. An honest cheat at least. She gathered them up and started to shuffle but Lucy was watching too intently so she shuffled them under the table instead. Lucy frowned at her. 

“When this is all over I'm going to take you two to Monte Carlo,” said Millie. “Empty a few casinos of their wealth.” She had been watching them, then, as intent as she appeared to be in her book. 

Another one of Millie's daydreams. “That's Millie,” Susan mused. “Always thinking about the next train to catch.” She remembered when that had been frustrating, rather than so interesting and just a little – she would allow herself to admit – just a little romantic.

The empty, hollow thumping continued. Every time it seemed the sound moved further away there would be a closer one to follow, dashing their hopes. Susan's eyes would flick to Millie, still reading, and over the table to Lucy, perfectly absorbed. The other girls fiddled with the radio. Mrs Donalds poured tea from a Thermos and they all had a biscuit. 

Eventually they counted the seconds through the silence, waiting for more bombs to start the clock again, until the all clear sounded. With a collective sigh they breathed in the fresh air and headed back into the house. Millie and Mrs Donalds went out the front door to look up and down the street.

“Not even a misplaced roof tile,” Millie reported as she followed Susan up the stairs. 

“Thank goodness,” Susan said, doubly vehemently lest a casual observer should think Millie sounded a touch disappointed rather than impressed. It only made Millie give a little laugh at her. 

Back in the bedroom, Susan threw off her coat and grumbled, “I don't know how I'll ever get back to sleep and we'll be up again in a few hours.”

“I can give you a hand,” Millie said with the greatest possible level of indecency. Susan considered exiling her to the other side of the room just on those grounds. She didn't. She gave Millie a scathing look but extended her hand and dragged them both onto the tiny and creaking bed. 

Of course Millie's mere presence was a comfort, warm and tangible. And Millie was a delight, a distraction. But it was more than that. It had always been more than that. 

Millie leant over her, providing that solidness, so that Susan felt contained and anchored. Millie kissed her and as the pressure grew between them, combustible and intoxicating, she held herself closer and then shifted. Millie slipped a hand in between them and Susan moved against her. She could feel Millie smiling into her neck as her breathing picked up. 

Until, disastrously, the door swung sharply open making them both tremble in the bed. Light flooded in from the corridor, blinding them to the figure in the doorway.

“Can I come in with you? My roommate won't stop crying.”

“Christ!” Millie said unhelpfully as she rolled off Susan. “I thought you were a German.” 

Lucy stumbled into the room, a blanket round her shoulders, closing the door and plunging them back into darkness. “Why are you both in Susan's bed?”

“Millie was cold,” Susan said, as though this were perfectly and completely normal. 

“So you can go in mine. Everything has worked out smashingly.” Millie's voice was just a fraction higher pitched than usual.

Lucy didn't seem to think anything was untoward. “All right. Night.”

“Night,” said Susan.

Susan knew her disapproval must be rolling off her like a fog and no doubt Millie thought it all rather funny. 

After leaving enough time for Lucy to fall asleep, Millie's giggles began. Susan, to make it plain she at least was still awake, elbowed her sharply.

“Ow!” Millie hissed, still chuckling. “Mind out, you'll puncture a lung.”

Susan didn't say anything. Until, “Germans,” she whispered and began laughing too.

“What?” Millie was slightly outraged. “They are dropping bombs on us.”

“I can just imagine parachutes over B.P. If they broke into the huts and saw all those women they'd probably turn round and leave.”

“Zis cannot be top secret military installation.”

“Precisely.”

“And now, women in bed with one another. Or maybe then they would stay, dirty beggars.”

“Do you think there are?”

“What?”

“Women... in bed.”

“Oh darling, I imagine every other room has women in bed with one another tonight. Lucy would be in bed with one of us now if we weren't already.” That was not quite the point Susan was shuffling toward. Millie continued. “And other nights. Maybe not fully half of us, though who knows. There are… others.”

“Other than us.” That was perilously close to an admission, a definition.

“If you like. Yes.” Millie appeared to be holding her breath with a nervousness that was unusual and thus deeply gratifying. 

“But after the war…”

“After the war we can do whatever we want.” Millie said it with such passion Susan was worried it would wake Lucy. 

Whether it was true or not Susan almost didn’t care. It was easy to get swept away. “I just... I don't want this to end.” Abruptly it was no longer a conversation about the war and the world.

“It doesn't have to. We'll go away.”

Susan groaned. “Not this again.”

“We will.” Millie propped herself up on her elbow. “We'll go see the world we're doing our little bit to save. We'll take Lucy and then we'll come back and do as Jean says and help change the world all over again.”

“You know, you almost make me believe that could be true.” Susan felt an overwhelming sense of tenderness. Millie was so earnest, so eager, so open and ready and excited for this. Susan believed her. With everything she possessed, after all this time, she believed her. “That we won’t have to be ordinary.”

Millie grinned so that Susan could feel it in her kiss. “I won’t let you.”


End file.
